The Industry's Opinion: The 360 Launch

Gamasutra's ever-interesting question of the week queried individuals in the games industry for their opinions on the launch of the Xbox 360. There were opinions from both sides of the issue, with folks in between as well. From the article: "In my opinion, Microsoft did a superb job of establishing Xbox 360 as the premier next-gen gaming platform. However, it suffered a huge setback when it failed to get enough machines to the market for the Christmas holiday. While coordinating a console launch across multiple continents is truly a massive undertaking, a company as massive as Microsoft has no excuse for being so grossly unprepared. -Coray Seifert, Large Animal Games"

Comments

Re:This of it as this...

[heinousjay]

Yeah, they're dying all right. They're barely making more money than most people can comprehend.

Re:xbox start is a failure

[Malor]

I haven't been paying attention for a couple of months, but as far as I know, Sony doesn't even have a finalized hardware spec... and they're supposed to launch in 90 days.

I don't see it. My guess is, a Japan launch for Christmas and a US launch in March of 2007. And the console will not make bread, do the dishes, and fold your laundry. It'll probably be quite good, but this is, after all, Sony. You know, DRM Sony? They're both braindead and known for overpromising and underdelivering(see: PS2 and 'real time Toy Story', hah).

I'm sure I'll buy one, just like I have all the other consoles. But I very strongly suspect it won't be that much better than the 360, if it's better at all, and I REALLY doubt we're going to see it in the US before 2007.

I wonder if the Cell processor will go down with Itanium in the 'hideously expensive boondoggles' category. That thing looks monstrously tough to program. They're gonna have to sell an awful lot of difficult-to-develop-for chips to pay for all those billions they spent on design.

Re:Sold Out = Successful.

[MrCopilot]

If you were a 3rd party looking to develop games for the 360, then a sell out is not what you're looking for. What you want to see is everyone who wants an X-Box gets one as soon as possible, so your game has more people to sell to. A shortage means people who might have bought your game won't, as they have nothing to play it on

Well I don't know about that, I think if I were a 3rd party developer, I'd rather have people lined up waiting to get thier hands on the platform than see a stack of PSP's at Best Buy. If they are selling out, you know you have at least that many potentially game-starved customers. And if it creates a rush on the consoles by Xmas then you get the rush too. You see.

Or You could have a pile of your software sitting next to the stack of unsold PSPs.

Sooner or Later (Read Decemer 21) MS will get XBox 360s to every single person who has the want and cash, don't let there be any doubt about that. Almost every new Console purchase brings at least one game purchase. And thats a much better place to be if you are a 3rd party developer.

There are advantages to being a MS only title, mainly the boat load of cash, but MS has to want you not the other way around. If you're lucky you trade in your 3rd party uniform for a 1st. Ship 1 or 2 games and quit to start a new 3rd party dev house.